#theory

[guwix]

What will happen to N in Episode 8?

As we have already seen, Glitch has a product where the characters are depicted with a showcase. At the moment, we just have to wait for N. But just his image tells us what is happening in episode 8.

Judging by the silhouette, it is clear that N has disformed. His hand looks much different than in the mutation of AbsoluteSolver.

Let's go back to the beginning. From the very beginning, V had a memory of what was happening. Therefore, she knows a lot more about navarnik (ahem, than the viewer). I think she avoided N for a reason.

She also asked N and Uzi NOT to interfere, which tells us that they will cause more "trouble". As Cyn said, in episode 7, N did what she needed to do.

Empathy between N and Uzi was planned from the very beginning, or Cyn failed to achieve its goals. And for this to happen, there was no way N had to get his memories back.

Or, it is the main problem for Absolute Solver.

Let's go back to the beginning of the theory of this post. As I said, N mutates. And this is hinted at by the description itself from the product website:

A hapless drone, host to an enternal entity - will she succumb, or will she ascend?

I assume that N has its own Absolut Solver, only, which performs "its" function. This is indicated by the display itself at N:

"AbsoluteSolver" blocked by administration "Cyn".

In conclusion, in series 8, without the help of the administration, N will stay (or partially), Solver. And it will be against the background of emotional pressure.

#murder drones #murder drones v #murder drones j #murder drones uzi #murder drones n #murderdrones #murder drones theory #theory #my art #murder drones cyn

[blueepink07]

Here is the video format in case it is too annoying to read by pictures like this!

#alien stage #sua alien stage #sua alnst #thoughts #alien stage analysis #theory #character analysis #alnst mizi #mizisua #alien stage mizi #Youtube

[neversetyoufree]

Obviously I'm very glad that Domi has stepped in to help protect Dante and Johann, and it's great that she's calling Dante by his name. However, I'm vaguely concerned that a member of the de Sade family directly confronting chasseurs (and particularly hateful chasseurs!) could lead to very bad things down the line.

Back at the start of the catacombs arc, Johann pointed out that relations between the church and the vampire establishment are still extremely tense, so it would be prohibitively dangerous for Orlock and his people to get involved in a conflict with them. If you take Johann at his word, it could take as little as one false step to set off the beginnings of another war. And the situation has only gotten worse since the catacombs.

Dominique isn't as politically important as Count Orlock, but she's still a member of a key family of aristocrats. If Gano and Ogier escalate the current situation to violence and Domi has to fight them, there's a chance things could spiral out of control in a big way.

There's also a chance Domi, Dante, and Johann will still be able to calm things down without a fight, of course, but if it does come to blows, I'm afraid an excuse to hurt or be hurt by a vampire aristocrat is the perfect opportunity for Gano. We know the extremists want an opportunity to go to war again, after all. I don't know if Gano shares that desire, since he's working with Ruthven on the side, but he's hateful enough that I sure wouldn't rule it out.

#not that I think war's going to erupt on the streets if this escalates #we've still got to deal with the miel plot. among other things #but depending on how things go. this could push the situation in a really bad direction in the long term #or maybe not! #but in any case. this is the most interested I've been in the bigger political forces lurking in the background in vnc #suddenly it all feels very important and immediate #vnc #vanitas no carte #the case study of vanitas #theory #vnc spoilers #vnc 63

[disneysooner]

Theory Time: Bluey Edition! 🔍💙🐾

#my post #disney #theory #baby daddy #bluey #bluey heeler #mackenzie collie #jean luc #what do you think?

[msslu]

Hello!

Emh, I want to share a thought I had while watching the first episode of the second season of Good Omens (again xd).

I realized that we always start with a beginning and before the beginning in these seasons or stories. And perhaps,in the next season the same thing may happen telling us the first moments that they met together. One of them could be the fall of Crowley, I'm not sure if that could be it. It may be another time.

But if we talk about that moment might show us why and how Crowley fall. Because he made a lot of questions, but to whom he asked those questions. As well as we know Metatron is like the voice of God, as he says. Everything you talk to him is like talking to God. But in reality we are not talking to God but to Metatron, and could all that information he receives be reported to God?

Metatron hates the "ridiculous" questions and the mess. That's why he didn't I took Gabriel to hell so there would be no scandal and questions about what is happening in heaven.

Well, I think that's all. Thank you to the people who stopped reading this. And an apology, my English is not pretty good.

#michael sheen #david tennant #azirowley #good omens season 3 #good omens 2 #ineffable partners #angel crowley #aziraphale #crowley #theory #thinking so many thoughts #metatron #fall of Crowley

[servethelight]

I started bad batch season 3 and I once saw a theory that crosshairs tremor came from the fact that he is a mere clone of the original crosshair. I personally don’t believe it. One point in crosshair‘s journey always stuck out to me and it was the enhancement of his inhibitor chip. Crosshair mentioned he had it taken out but we never saw it. I never believed him anyways. Since his hand tremor started when he disobeyed direct orders (shooting his CO) I think it’s a side effect from the chip. I did say that since season one (in hope for a redemption arc) but i think that man was very much still controlled by the chip to an extent.

#the bad batch #star wars #tbb crosshair #tbb #sw tbb #theory #season 3 #tbb season 3 #possible spoilers #crosshair redemption?

[nunalastor]

I've been thinking a lot about Lilith and why she's hanging about in heaven and last night it hit me, idk if someone else has come up with this idea before but I've never seen it so I thought I'd share

We don't know a whole lot about Lilith as a person, but the story from the first episode seems to paint the idea she cared pretty deeply for the people of hell, and she's probably where Charlie gets most of her ideals. A lot of people are assuming the worst with her, which is fair, that ending bit with her on the beach was a bit suspicious, but it could be a misdirect about her character. If she's a better person then we assume, maybe she's not in heaven because she wants to be, maybe she's there because she fucking died and ended up there just like Sir Pentious did. Lute talks about some kind of "deal" with Adam but who knows what that means, it could be as simple as "we don't want people to know about this so your choices are me killing you or you fucking off to a beach in the middle of nowhere", we already know heaven has a habit for keeping dirty little secrets from the public, so I could see that being the case

The thing I'm unsure about is how this connects to Alastor, as they make it obvious his and Lilith's disappearance is connected in some way. My only idea is that he's one that killed her, or was at least involved in some way. Alastor does seem to have a habit of picking fights above his pay grade (see him picking fights with Adam and Lucifer), maybe this confidence comes previous experience. Maybe this deal of his with someone was to give him the power to take her on or something, I don't really know

I'm not as confident with the Alastor stuff but I'm 90% sure about this Lilith thing, I think I'm on to something here

👀👀

#hazbin hotel #nunalastor asks #lilith #meta #theory #headcanon

[kitsipher]

Y'all, someone tell me they aren't secretly dating..

My proof that they are dating behind both mine and @i-ate-your-dog-srry 's back.. convince me otherwise.

#theory #teehee #silly ocs #HUH #DATING... #art #meow #welcome home #digital art #welcome home puppet show #kitsipher #welcome home oc #silly #welcome home art #cat #puppet oc #fannart

[philosophybits]

Discussions of the way in which truth is correspondence to reality float free of discussions of what there is in heaven and earth. No roads lead from the project of giving truth-conditions for the sentences of English (English as it is spoken, containing all sorts of theories about all sorts of things) to criteria for theory-choice or to the construction of a canonical notation which "limns the true and ultimate structure of reality." Correspondence, for Davidson, is a relation which has no ontological preferences — it can tie any sort of word to any sort of thing. This neutrality is an expression of the fact that, in a Davidsonian view, nature has no preferred way of being represented, and thus no interest in a canonical notation. Nor can nature be corresponded to better or worse, save in the simple sense that we can have more or fewer true beliefs.

Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature

#philosophy #quotes #Richard Rorty #Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature #truth #correspondence #reality #language #representation #theory #ontology #metaphysics

[ashleyquinn03]

Alright, theory time:

Andrew and Ashley will be getting fake IDs in episode 3 no matter the route.

We know that they can't use their own IDs as they were pronounced dead due to the soda/water supply/organ harvesting/surgery conspiracy. And they can't use their parents' IDs as the parents "went missing."

So, who will they be on new IDs? We can guess that they'll still use their own first names or if they (*cough* Andrew *cough*) are being extra cautious, they'll probably use their nicknames on the IDs; but what about last names? Well, this might be how we learn Mrs Graves maiden name, they might go with that as their last name.

Relating to this theory, I have a question about this:

Do they have their new IDs by this point (assuming all these screenshots happen in the same route and are connected) or are they going to have to convince these officers of a lie? I mean, obviously the Grave siblings haven't gotten rid of the stolen car yet, (I assume we'll see Andrew having an internal panic attack.) so they might not have their new IDs at this point.

#thanks for coming to my ted talk #thanks for letting me ramble #the coffin of andy and leyley #tcoaal #tcoa&l #ashley graves #andrew graves #devlog #tcoaal devlog #the Coffin of Andy and Leyley devlog #theory

[mahaguro]

Jujutsu Kaisen: Too Many Translations and Sukuna's Fingers

As of Chapter 257, the Jujutsu Kaisen fandom has been in shambles regarding the series’ translations. 

I hate to say that the translations can be subpar at times.

John Werry's understanding of the manga can be abysmal. While it is technically his job, it seems like he doesn't engage with the series beyond that.

I’ll provide a recent example. According to John Werry, Gojo “can’t use Black Flash.”

John Werry’s Version

If it weren’t for TCB, I would be very confused. I could’ve sworn Gojo landed a Black Flash on Sukuna. Many of us saw how it knocked Sukuna’s lights out. It was quite literally THE highlight of the Shinjuku showdown. 

TCB’s Version

I may not be fluent in Japanese to accurately translate, but John Werry and TCB’s clearly reaches different conclusions. Werry’s version explicitly says Gojo can’t use Black Flash, while TCB suggests that despite having the Six Eyes, he can’t perform it whenever he wants.

I just now realized there are people who wait for the physical volumes and do not partake in the weekly discourse. That’s tough. 

The Japanese language often contains subtle nuances that never make its way into other languages. I find it a tad concerning when whole ideas or concepts are misconstrued, becoming ambiguous from being lost in translation.

Continue reading for free on Substack

#jjk #jjk manga #manga #jujutus kaisen #jjk spoilers #gojo satoru #sukuna #jujutsu kaisen #yuji itadori #yuta okkotsu #theory #analysis #character analysis #fan theory #discussion #manga theory #theories #sukuna ryomen #ryoumen sukuna #jjk sukuna #jujutsu kaisen sukuna #Gojo #gojo saturo #jujutsu gojo #jjk gojo

[justaninjageek]

So I have a thought about Arin's spinjitzu.

We know that Shatterspin is based on strength, and Dragon Rising is based on motion; they're likely tied to the Source Dragons that embody those concepts, as well. but Arin struggles to learn the kind of Spinjitzu that leads to Dragon Rising, as he can't connect with the motion of the universe the way Egalt wants him to.

What if Arin's spinjitzu isn't based on strength or motion? what if it's tied to another one of the source dragons, like life or energy, or one of the three we don't know yet? it would explain why he's been struggling to improve under Lloyd's mentorship, and would open up an interesting avenue for him to invent a new, unique technique in the future. He might even come up with a form that combines multiple different Sources, becoming the greatest ninja just as Lloyd knew he could.

#ninjago #dragons rising #dragons rising season 2 #arin ninjago #arin dragons rising #spinjitzu #theory #dragons rising theory #source dragons #shatterspin #geek speaks

[theoutcastrogue]

the internet is rotting, as Jonathan Zittrain noted in an important (but paywalled) 2021 Atlantic article. A huge percentage of the links on the internet are broken, and there is no single authoritative, accessible universal repository that keeps track of everything. It is frighteningly easy for crucial information to slip away. ...

The practice of making changes to an article without noting that you’ve made them is called “stealth editing,” and even the New York Times does it. ... The existence of stealth editing means that it’s difficult to trust that the version of an article you click on at any given moment is the article as it was originally published. ...

I also, to my alarm, realized just how dependent we are on private publications themselves to give us access to records of their own work. Often, they keep it payawalled behind locked gates and charge you admission if you want to have a look. There are lots of sources in the Chomsky book to which you have to subscribe if you want to verify, such as this 1999 story in the Los Angeles Times about NATO’s bombing of a bus in Yugoslavia. This is a story of national importance, far too overlooked at the time, but if you don’t subscribe to the LA Times, you need research library access or a workaround if you want to read it.

Thank God for the Internet Archive, whose Wayback Machine preserves as much of the internet as they can and is invaluable for researchers trying to figure out what was once housed at now-dead links. But the Internet Archive has its limits. Social media posts, YouTube videos, paywalled Substack posts, PDFs—all can be very difficult to track down after they disappear. If a politician tweets something embarrassing, for instance, and then deletes it, it might be preserved in a screenshot. But we know screenshots are easy to fake. So where do you turn to prove satisfactorily that something was in fact said? ...

it’s very easy to lose pieces of information that seem permanent. E-books, for instance, can be changed by their publisher without the changes even being noted. You might read a book on your Amazon Kindle one day and open it up the next day to look for a quote only to find that the quote has disappeared without a trace. The Guardian, for twenty years, hosted a copy of Osama bin Laden’s “letter to the American people,” an important historical document. After the letter went viral on TikTok, the Guardian removed it from the site entirely. The New Republic did the same after an article of theirs about Pete Buttigieg caused controversy. The documents in question can still be found, but only by digging through the Internet Archive. If that ever goes down, researchers will find that trying to piece together the online past is like trying to learn about a lost civilization from excavated fragments. ...

I think that in an age where people (rightly) don’t trust the information they’re getting to be true, it needs to be as easy as possible to do research. Instead, while we have better technology than ever for sifting through information, it’s still the case that the truth is paywalled and the lies are free. If you want to “do your own research” to check on the veracity of claims, you will run headlong into a maze of broken links, paywalls, and pop-ups. How can anyone hope to find the truth when it’s so elusive, trapped behind so many toll gates? 

#Nathan J. Robinson #theory #information wants to be free

[neversetyoufree]

Just recently found your blog and i love it!!! do have any theories for vanitas' original name? My guess is Abraham, for all it doesn't really fit him, after Abraham van hellsing, who is both a doctor and vampire expert, which I think matches mochijuns naming conventions. Doesn't hurt that it matches with Noe (noah) religiously.

Thank you!! Welcome to the party ;D

Traditionally, I've always said I don't have any strong theories on Vanitas's name—at least none that I actually expect to come true. I think(?) I've talked about this before, but that's not really the kind of theorizing I do? Since right now any name theory is wild guessing and speculation, not elaborating from the text.

That said, I do now have one pet theory that I'm partial to (one I didn't have the last time someone asked me this). I don't actually think this is going to be the case in canon, but for now, I really enjoy the concept of Vanitas's real name being Byron. This is mostly because I think it would be funny, but there are some actual connections too.

Long context short, Lord Byron wrote an unfinished draft of what would have been the first modern vampire story, and then his personal doctor (John William Polidori) took the same idea and fleshed it out into The Vampyre—the actual generally recognized first modern vampire story. But! Polidori's version of the vampire (the version that established a lot of our vampire tropes) was partly inspired by Byron himself. So Byron is sort of this almost-but-not-quite vampire author, writing but also inspiring the tropes of vampirism, which reflects interestingly on Vanitas's relationship to actual vampirism. He's not a vampire, but he's much closer to one than any other human, and in demeanor, he acts more stereotypically vampiric than Noé and many other vampire characters.

Also, Byron is the namesake of the Byronic hero, which Vanitas is a perfect example of. He's brooding, cynical, arrogant, and intelligent, but despite his gloom and self-destructiveness, he has a sort of lonely magnetism about him. Once again, the concept of the Byronic hero is inspired by/named after both Byron himself and the characters he wrote.

As I said, I don't think I'm going to be right about this, as there's a million other theories that could fit just as well, but in the meantime, the concept does tickle me. Polidori's Byron-based vampire even has an especially strong connection to the moon :D.

Anyway, I really like your theory as well. I've noted before that it's interesting that there's no Van Hellsing reference in VnC (or any direct Dracula references at all, save poor dead Mina). It's almost surprising given Dracula is the iconic vampire story. I never even considered that there could be a Dracula reference hidden right there in Vani and waiting to be discovered, but it does make sense. The doctor/vampire expert connection is really fun and fitting! Though I'm afraid I don't know enough about the biblical Abraham to say anything interesting about that aspect beyond what you pointed out there.

#look mom I finally have my very own Vanitas name theory! I'm finally a real theorist! #(lmao) #thanks for the ask! #ask #anon #vnc #vanitas no carte #the case study of vanitas #theory #comparison #vanitas my beloved

[brachyzoid]

What's your craziest/most fun Honkai Star Rail theory?

#hsr #caelus #honkai star rail #honkaistarrail #pepe silvia #meme #elio #nanook #brachyzoid #brachyartz #trailblazer #theory

[patchwork-crow-writes]

The RalsAlmanac, Volume I

Okay, here it is! A series of essays that will attempt to definitively explain just who or what Ralsei is, referring to scenes from the game as evidence, as well as external sources where appropriate.

There will be some conjecture, as there's just so much we don't know about him, and what little we are given isn't exactly the most revealing. However, I've done my best to cleave as closely to the source material as I can, and I believe there's a strong case to be had here.

Hopefully you'll be able to see where my points come from, or at the very least you'll learn something you didn't know before. Either way, thanks for your consideration!

Volume I - Ralsei Is A Character In A Role-Playing Game.

Self-indulgent reference out of the way, lemme ask you a question.

Who is Ralsei?

It's a question that seems like it should be easy to answer. He's the Prince From The Dark, the third of the three Delta Warriors, he exists to serve the lightners, and is the most precious little cinnamon roll that ever lived. He enjoys baking and crochet, can hold a tune, is a decent interior-decorator, and holds his friends Kris and Susie in very high regard.

Thing is, that's about all you can really say about him without veering into speculation and headcanons, and they're more surface-level observations than anything else. What exactly does "Prince From The Dark" mean, for instance? Prince in what sense, exactly? Ceremonial, or with the actual power that royalty conveys? Where does he rank in comparison to, say, King or Queen, both actual rulers of actual kingdoms? The title of "prince" would suggest that he answers to them, but while they rule their own municipalities, Ralsei's title implies he rules over ALL dark worlds. You could go on asking these questions forever, but I think you see what I'm getting at.

A more productive avenue of questioning might be: What role does Ralsei play in the story of Deltarune? Perhaps more of his underlying character and motivation could be gleaned by looking at what he does for the story and the game. And this would be correct... sort of.

We tend to think of him as the squishy healer of the party, the Heart and moral centre of the Fun Gang. And he absolutely is that, but he's also quite a bit more. He plays all sorts of different roles and character archetypes in the first two chapters of the game, including but not limited to:

the old man whose purpose is to wax poetic about the ancient prophecy...

the know-it-all tutorial fairy who walks you through the basic game mechanics...

the straight-man DM trying to keep everything on the rails...

the young sheltered noble experiencing the outside world for the first time...

the demure love-interest to the main protagonist...

the Polyanna determined to see the good in everybody...

the mysterious waif who knows things he shouldn't...

...eye candy…?

...and so on and so forth.

And so what, I hear you cry. Characters in video games can have more than one personality trait, after all. And yes, this is true! But usually, the different aspects of a character's roles, how they interact with, reinforce or contradict each other, can tell us more about their inner world - what motivates them, what they actively like and dislike... in short, it grants them depth and allows us to engage with them as actual people, rather than just a series of game functions and character traits dressed up in a pretty bow.

But that's not what we see with Ralsei. In fact, far from showing us any real, deep aspect of his character, each new guise he dons and part he plays in the narrative further obfuscates him from us. We learn no new meaningful information from any of these exchanges... except for one thing, but we'll come to that in a moment.

This vexes us, because we WANT to know more about him, but all we end up getting is stock JRPG tropes dressed up in a warm, fluffy coat. There HAS to be something deeper, we reason - he's hiding things from us, so he must be a secret villain. Or his backstory is so tragic, so traumatising, that he cannot properly articulate it to us right now. Or maybe what we see really IS what we get - a simpering, airheaded fool whose only desires in life are to be cute, please his betters and do what he's told. Yet even this explanation seems... unsatisfying, especially since we KNOW he harbours some angst about himself and his sense of identity.

And speaking of which, that one thing we learn? Right at the end of Chapter 2's Acid Tunnel sequence, he utters a single sentence:

This is arguably one of the most significant lines of dialogue in the entire game up to this point. But what does it mean, exactly? I believe most people assume it means he doesn't have a clear sense of who he is outside of his ordained purpose, which is certainly valid, and definitely something I believed for a long time. And yet, this explanation does not deepen our understanding of his character in any meaningful way; looking back over all his interactions with the cast, it does not allow us to glean any further information about him.

And you can say that's because he himself doesn't know what he's like... but again, this doesn't actually change anything, and we just end up with a circular logic trap. We don't know anything because he doesn't tell us anything, and he doesn't tell us anything because he doesn't know anything, so how can we be expected to know anything, except that no-one seems to know anything about him… which is very frustrating to us Ralsei scholars, and gets us no closer to truly understanding him.

But look at what he says again. Really look at it. It’s a very strange way of saying “I don’t really know who I am”, isn’t it? After all, if that’s what he means, then why doesn’t he just say that? I’m certain you’ve realised by now, but it’s because that’s NOT what he’s saying at all. He literally has no clue what being “himself” is supposed to be, because he wasn’t even created with a sense of “Ralsei-ness” in the first place. Little wonder, then, that we can’t discern anything about his internal world, when there is nothing there to be discerned.

But before I elaborate any further, I want to talk about a couple of scenes in Deltarune that are just... puzzling. This is relevant, I promise. The first is during the dialogue with Rouxls Kaard before the rematch with K.Round. Ralsei says something interesting in the lead-up to the fight:

Note Susie’s baffled reaction to this. Then not long afterwards, he continues with:

Throwaway joke, right? We laugh because Susie's right - K. Round and its crown do look exactly the same to us, and so Ralsei's dramatic utterances are deflated and lose their impact. We laugh, beat the boss with Susie's help and forget all about it. But here's the thing - if K.Round looks the same to us, and it looks the same to Susie, and presumably by extension the rest of the in-game characters... when why exactly does Ralsei take the time to insist otherwise?

Is he... lying? Our most precious little boy, guilty of perjury? Say it ain't so! :O

The second scene is in chapter 2 - Queen has challenged us to a game of Punch-Out on her absurdly tall arcade machine, and we can talk to the characters before trying to interact with it. Talk to Ralsei, and if you answer "Gaming is my life" to his prompt, he says this:

Most people don't even come across this in their playthrough, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's new to you reading this. But again, note this strange discrepancy between what Ralsei reports is happening and what Susie says is actually happening. It becomes apparent to most people that Kris can affect the tone of their voice when saying what we tell them to, which affects how the response is taken by other characters and gives us a subtle clue about how they actually feel about certain characters or situations.

Are we to assume, then, that Ralsei isn't actually listening to how Kris says things, but only what they're saying? And if that's correct, then... what does that say about him?

Taken at face-value, within the context of the game, neither of these events really make much sense. It just looks like Ralsei is being overly-dramatic, or lying, or perhaps even insensitive to what their friend is trying to tell him, which doesn't quite track with his per-established shallow traits of kind, all-loving and moralistic. It's perplexing and seemingly out-of-character for him. So it might help to consider, in each of these scenarios, who exactly Ralsei is talking to.

Is it Kris and/or Susie? This would make the most sense, but it's actually not that likely, considering the aforementioned discrepencies between his descriptions and Susie's observations. So is it himself? Again, if he can see things the same as everyone else in-game, that wouldn't make much sense, because then he's just saying stuff that... isn't true? Or in the latter example's case, just completely ignoring what Kris is saying, which doesn't seem to entirely gel with what we know about him.

So, who does that leave? Well, the only other person - or should I say entity - who is present for both of those scenes is... us. The player of Deltarune. And that might seem even stranger than the previous options, until you realise what it is he's actually doing - providing flavour text, additional exposition informing us of details that we wouldn't - or shouldn't - be able to make out on a pixelated display with no voice-acting, attempting to give us a richer sense of these events in order to increase our sense of immersion in the game and world of Deltarune. In effect, he's playing the part of a character in a role playing game, doling out “flavour text” that contradicts another character’s experience of the same scenes, and he's doing it entirely for OUR benefit. Not Kris’s, not Susie's – ours.

He tells us that K.Round's crown is different, and that it is in pain from its forced control, to try and increase the stakes of the fight, and to give us a motivation that's not "here's the exact same boss again lul". He responds to Kris's words the way he does, not because he doesn't understand the nuances of their tone, but to try and amp us up for the upcoming challenge, and to validate our choice when we select the dialogue option "Gaming is my life". Because we cannot hear Kris's tone of voice - and Ralsei knows that. To him, Kris's tone literally doesn't matter, because he doesn't believe it matters to us in that exact moment.

And here’s the thing: if not for Susie’s asides immediately contradicting him, we’d likely take what he says here as what’s actually going on. To Ralsei, the reality he and his friends experience is not important – it’s the image of that reality that he’s trying to convey to the player. It’s like he knows he’s part of a game, meant just for us to experience and enjoy, as opposed to a real world filled with real people having real experiences.

And the reason I brought this up is to illustrate what I believe Ralsei to actually be - namely, that he a walking, talking, singing and dancing amalgam of stock JRPG characters and tropes that's trying very hard to present as an actual person, to the point of knowing absolutely nothing about who he even is outside of that. Put in even blunter terms, he's literally a fluffy goat-shaped vehicle to set the player on their journey through the game, to keep them playing and to keep them invested. People looking for deeper aspects of his character come up short and are disappointed because they're looking for something that does not currently exist.

And just so that I'm clear, I do not mean that Ralsei is "acting", or that he's "wearing a mask", because that would imply that there was actually something underneath his "facade" to begin with. No, this is who the Prince of the Dark is - a very convincing fascimile of a person, following his directive to ensure that the story of Deltarune is resolved, and that the game of Deltarune is played to completion. And once you realise that, a lot of things that Ralsei says and does that seemed strange before suddenly make a lot more sense.

As for the why... well, that'll have to wait for another time. But hopefully you can begin to see how my future essays in this series all tie in to this one, because I think you can only really understand those with the framework that this text provides. I hope that my reasoning made sense and wasn't too difficult to follow, but I'll be happy to provide additional information, clarification, or even just discussion on any aspect of this essay... even if we just wind up (respectfully) agreeing to disagree. Would love to hear what people thought about this!

Thanks for reading!

#Writing #essay #analysis #theory #Deltarune #Ralsei #character study #The RalsAlmanac #deltarune chapter 1 #deltarune chapter 2 #essay collection